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2 小泉八雲(ラフカディオ・ハーン) 2-3 小泉八雲の生涯

ラフカディオ・ハーン漂泊の軌跡 -ヨーロッパからアメリカへ-

 2009年11月7日14時から、熊本大学くすの木会館レセプションルームにて、「ラフカディオ・ハーン漂泊の軌跡 -ヨーロッパからアメリカへ-」と題し、ヨーロッパ時代とアメリカ時代のハーンについて、基調講演とシンポジウムが開催されました。
 熊本大学学長の谷口功氏より開会のご挨拶があり、続いて司会の中村青史氏がハーンの孫にあたる稲垣明男氏(*注1)をご紹介され、基調講演「ヨーロッパ時代のハーン -ハーン実母の墓標とその子孫を訪ねて-」をお話ししていただきました。
 シンポジウムでは、パネリストに教授の福澤清氏、客員教授・名誉教授の西川盛雄氏、准教授のアラン・ローゼン氏、司会に中島最吉氏をむかえ、「アメリカ時代のハーン」をシンシナティ時代、ニューオーリンズ・マルティニーク時代、ニューヨーク・フィラデルフィア時代に分けてお話を頂戴し、会場からのご質問にもお答えいただきました。
 また、熊本大学マンドリンクラブによる「ロンドンデリーの歌」「フォスター・ラプソディー」の演奏もあり、拍手喝采を浴びていました。

 (*注1)ハーンの次男稲垣巌氏の長男にあたります

基調講演中の稲垣明男氏
基調講演中の稲垣明男氏
掛け軸 女性の足がない!?
掛け軸 女性の足がない!?
シンポジウムの様子
シンポジウムの様子
熊本大学マンドリンクラブの演奏
熊本大学マンドリンクラブの演奏

  熊本アイルランド協会事務局

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2 小泉八雲(ラフカディオ・ハーン) 2-2 小泉八雲の作品

ハーンが書かなかった作品(Lafcadio Hearn’s Unwritten Works)

アラン・ローゼン(Alan Rosen)(熊本大学准教授)

2009年(第11期)市民講座「ラフカディオ・ハーンとアイルランド文化」(5回シリーズの第4回)

熊本大学五高記念館

本講座を音声(mp3)でお聴きになれます。 

 

IN THE UNITED STATES
1. Collection of musical legends.
“I have been thinking that we might some day, together, work up a charming collection of musical legends: each legend followed by a specimen-melody, with learned discussion by H. Edward Krehbiel. But that will be for the days when we shall be ‘well-known and highly esteemed authors.’” (New Orleans 1883)

2. Financial novel.
The houses eleven stories high, that seem trying to climb into the moon, -the tremendous streets and roads, -the cascading thunder of the awful torrent of life, the sense of wealth-force and mind-power that oppresses the stranger here, -all these form so colossal a contrast with the inert and warmly colored Southern life that I know not how to express my impression. I can only think that I have found superb material for a future story, in which the influence of New York on a Southern mind may be described. … (Letters from the Raven 85-6; my emphasis)
But he eventually gave up this idea. Why?
But in such great cities [New York, London] I do not think a literary man can write any literature. …. Society withers him up–unless he have been born into the manner of it; and the complexities of the vast life about him he never could learn. Fancy a good romance about Wall Street-so written that the public could understand it! There is. of course, a tremendous romance there; but only a financier can really know the machinely, and his knowledge is technical. (XIV 292-93; my emphasis)

3. Medical novel.
Apropos of a medical novel, again-have you had occasion to remark the fact that among the French, every startling discovery in medicine or those sciences akin to medicine, is almost immediately popularized by a capital story? (XIV 22)
 I don’t like your plot for a medical novel at all. It involves ugliness…. Then your plot is too thin. It has not the beauty nor depth of that simple narrative about a famous painter, or writer-I forget which-whose imagination rendered it impossible for him to complete his medical studies…. He had to abandon medicine for art. A very powerful short sketch might be made of this fact.
 I believe in a medical novel-a wonderful medical novel. We must chat about it. Why not use a fantastic element-anticipate discoveries hoped for-anticipate them so powerfully as to make the reader believe you are enunciating realities? (XIV 62-63)

 

IN JAPAN
1. Article on drinking sake.
I have become what they call a jogo-and find that a love of sake creates a total change in all one’s eating habits and tastes. All the sweet things the geko likes. I cannot bear when taking sake. By the way, what a huge world of etiquette, art, taste, custom, has been developed by sake. An article upon sake-its social rules-its vessels-its physiologlcal effects-in short the whole romance and charm of a Japanese banquet, ought to be written by somebody. I hope to write one some day, but I am still learning. (XIV 160)

2. Article on words.
You recommend me to write an article on words some day. I would like to – from my own limited point of knowledge only; ignorance of philology would here be a great drawback. But it would be infinitely painful, laborious work. Because really the art of placing words is with most of us instinctive. It would be analyzing one’s own sensations and tendencies of imagination; it would be nearly as hard as to write another “Alice in Wonderland.” (XV 441-42)

3. Book on Japanese folklore.
“Professor Chamberlain and I have a secret project in hand-a book on Japanese folk-lore.” (Ellwood Hendrick, July 1893, XIV 236)

4. Article on the disappearance of the gods.
There are no ghosts, no angels and demons and gods: all are dead. The world of electricity, steam, mathematics, is blank and cold and void. No man can even write about it. Who can find a speck of romance in it? … The Protestant world has become bald and cold as a meeting-house. The ghosts are gone. Sometimes I think of writing a paper to be called “The Vanishing of the Gods.” (Chamberlain, December 1893, XVI 84)

5. Article on Japan’s “open ports.”
Coming out of my solitude of nearly five years to stand on the deck of the Kobe Maru on the 10th, I felt afraid, I saw myself again among giants. Everything seemed huge, full of force, dignity, massive potentialities divined but vaguely. A sudden sense of the meaning of that civilization I had been so long decrying and arguing against … came upon me crushingly. … How small suddenly my little Japan became!-how lonesome! What a joy to feel the West! (Yokohama, 15 July 1894, to Chamberlain, reprinted in Allen, 277)
I have received from the gods inspiration for a paper-the Romance of the Open Ports-or, perhaps, the morality of the open ports. … I could startle the world with a paper on the ideas that came to me the other day.
… In the brief time since I got on the Kobe Maru I have learned so many astonishing things … . My imaginary hard-fisted and cold-hearted businessmen of the colonies vanish away-phantoms only; and in their places what warm human realities appear! Really there is a vast romance to be written here in a few words-with help of thoughts and illustrations from evolutional philosophy. Really, I must try later to get into this exiled Western life, and love it, and study it, and tell all the beautiful things there are in it … . (Tokyo, 17 July 1894 to Chamberlain, reprinted in Allen. 278)

6. Article on Japanese drama.
Father used to express his desire to write on Japanese ‘No’ (a type of drama) and the theatre. At the time when Dr. Tsubouchi was praising ‘Ten-no-Amishima’ of Chikamatsu, father was asked about translating them, with the view to introducing them to foreign countries. But the plot of the story, where a man leaves his wife and child to elope with another woman, was against his belief, so he declined to undertake it (Father and I, 10)

7. Article on inter-racial marriage.
Father, one day, remarked to mother about the bad results from marriage of close relatives. But inter-racial marriage produced bad results too, he thought He was thinking of writing on the subject to a foreign paper. When he consulted his wife, she replied. ‘You are a product of inter-racial marriage-but are you a poor product?’ He replied, ‘At times I think I am a very poor result, almost a waste. This is a result of a very distant inter-racial marriage, I think. So, I just thought that I would write about.’ ‘But,’ mother said, ‘you write about such a thing, but you and I are two different races and what about our children? Is it right to acclaim to the world the poor product of such a marriage?’ He said to her, ‘Do you think so?’ and he tore up his manuscript. I think of that manuscript now and imagine all sorts of things. (Father and I, 13)

There is abundant proof, alike furnished by the intermarriages of human races and by the interbreeding of animals, that when the varieties mingled diverge beyond a certain slight degree the result is inevitably a bad one in the long run. . . . -there arise an incalculable mixture of traits, and what may be called a chaotic constitution. (Letter from Herbert Spencer to Baron Kaneko Kentaro, August 1892, XII 461)

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2 小泉八雲(ラフカディオ・ハーン) 2-2 小泉八雲の作品

Lafcadio Hearn and the Clifton Waller Barrett Collection

Alan Rosen(アラン・ローゼン 熊本大学助教授)
2006年(第8期)市民講座「ハーンを育んだアイルランドの風土と文化」(7回シリーズの第5回)
熊本大学五高記念館

1.General Introduction to the Barrett Collection

The Clifton Waller Barrett Collection is one of the largest and best collections of American Literature in the world. Formerly housed in the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville (Thomas Jefferson’s University), it is now housed in the university’s new Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The collection was opened to the public in 1960. Over 1000 authors are represented, and nearly 500 authors have been collected in depth. In total there are over 250,000 individual pieces by and about American writers from 1775 to 1950. Although the Hearn Collection is only a small part of the whole, it forms the most complete collection of original Hearn and Hearn-related materials in the world. Since some of these materials are still unpublished, or published only in part, this collection has become a kind of mecca for Hearn students and scholars. We can see and touch the actual paper Hearn wrote on, letters, manuscripts, and notebooks, and we can have photocopies made from any material that is not too fragile to be handled. Much of the collection has been recorded on microfilm, but much has not. In Japan there are only three places which have microfilm sets of the collection purchased from the Alderman Library: Kobe Shoin Joshidaigaku, Kumamoto Daigaku, and Shimane Daigaku. However, in order to see the real material and the many items not yet microfilmed, you must visit the University of Virginia Library. Once you are there, it is not difficult to see the materials in the Hearn Collection. In fact, the regulations are rather simple and straightforward. There are only three basic rules: 1. Researchers are asked to fill out a brief form and show a photo I.D. (such as a driver’s license, a passport). 2. Only loose paper, pencils, and a laptop computer are permitted in the reading room. No bags, envelopes, folders, notebooks, tablets, or containers of any type are permitted.

Lockers are provided to secure your belongings. 3. Paper is provided by the department for researchers. Laptop computers and other mechanical research tools are permissible provided that their use does not disturb other researchers (from Special Collections Library home page). Before you go into the special reading room with your laptop computer, you simply give your request to the librarian stationed at the desk outside the room. The request is simply a piece of paper stating the name and number of the box of materials that you wish to examine. You can leave the materials in the room when you go for lunch or a break, but at the end of the day all materials must be returned and checked.

When I visited the library several years ago in the summer of 2002, I especially enjoyed looking at Hearn’s manuscript letters and comparing them with the published versions edited by Elizabeth Bisland Wetmore to find the parts that she had omitted. From those manuscripts I was able to find a hidden side of Hearn’s personality that had been cut out from the public portrait of him.

For example, his bad-mouthing of important people and publishers, and his complaints about health or money. Today I would like to introduce the collection and take a closer look at the man who collected it and the story of why and how the collection came into being. In doing this, I hope to give a deeper impression of Hearn’s place in American literature.

2. What is in the Hearn collection?

The Hearn collection includes a wide range of materials by or about Lafcadio Hearn and his writings, both published and unpublished, partly preserved on microfilm, all housed in the same Special Collections Library. The types of materials are:
a. Manuscripts of published works, unpublished essays, and articles
b. Notebooks
c. Letters
d. Newspaper articles by Hearn (Japan Chronicle)
e. Newspaper articles and letters about Hearn and his writings
f. Photos, Fragments, etc.

The Homepage for the Special Collections Library calls it the “Finest Hearn collection ever assembled.” Joan Crane, the Curator of American Literature Collections when the collection was opened, writes:
In the Barrett Hearn collection are the original manuscripts of The Temptation of St. Anthony [Sento Antoni no yuuwaku], Exotics and Retrospectives [Ikoku joucho to kaiko], Kwaidan, and Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan [Shirarenu nihon no omokage]; fragments of Two Years in the French West Indies [Futsu ryou Nishi indo shotou no ni-nen kan], Youma, Shadowings [Kage], In Ghostly Japan [Reiteki Nippon], Kotto, and Out of the East [Higashi no Kuni Kara]; forty unpublished essays and articles, seventeen notebooks ranging from the New Orleans period to the West Indies to Japan [Internet page says over 30 notebooks], more than 450 letters [Internet page says “nearly three hundred letters&rdquo], and Hearn’s holograph drafts of published articles. Five of the nine numbers of Ye Giglampz, described by Mr. Barrett as a Hearn rarissimum, are present (the only complete set known is in the holdings of the Cincinnati Public Library). The collection of printed works represents every publication: Hearn variant bindings, later editions, periodical printings, translations, inscribed association copies. This part of the Barrett Library devoted to Lafcadio Hearn’s works reflects one facet of Mr. Barrett’s extraordinary accomplishment as a scholarly collector.

In the display of these books and manuscripts at the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia, it is our purpose to draw back the attention of students, scholars, teachers, and readers to a figure in the literary history of this country whose importance has become obscured.

3. Who was Clifton Waller Barrett?

Clifton Waller Barrett was born in the US in 1901. Barrett graduated from the University of Virginia, Class of 1920 at 19 years old. He became chief executive of the North Atlantic and Gulf Steamship Company, Inc. During WWII he was Director of Sugar Transportation for the War Shipping Administration. He was a great reader and book-lover, but he started collecting books rather late [at 38 years old in 1939]. Even so, by 1950 he had a personal library that was considered outstanding among book-lovers in the US. Throughout his life he continued to spend a large part of his fortune on literary materials, slowly building up an outstanding collection of American literary material, including lesser-known writers along with the works of those who were already famous. He gave his entire collection to the university he loved, his alma mater, the University of Virginia.

He continued to support the library’s acquisition of rare American literary materials until he died.[From “A Brief Account of The Clifton Waller Barrett Library” Charlottesville, The University of Virginia, 1960, by Herbert Cahoon, Curator of Autograph Manuscripts, The Pierpont Morgan Library]

4. Why and how did the collection come into being?

We have the words of Mr. Barrett himself to tell us the details. “In 1939 … I [Clifton Waller Barrett] decided to amass a comprehensive collection of American literature-first editions and original manuscripts of American writers from the beginning of the Republic in 1776 to the present day. … Acquiring these milestone’s of a nation’s literary life became a full-time occupation. I retired from business to carry it forward….

At first, my efforts were devoted to forming collections of the great figures of American literature: Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, Poe, Longfellow, Emerson…. Early on, however, I began to realize the importance of so-called minor writers who fleshed out and formed the underpinnings of the nation’s literature….One writer who stood out in this group was Lafcadio Hearn.

His amazing originality, combined with the unusual beauty and quality of his writing had won praise from discriminating critics; however, in the years of World WarII and the decade following he was neglected. When I started to collect his works they were in modest demand, though prices of available material were quite high-due perhaps to his emergence as a cult figure and to the paucity of items on the market. My first purchase was … Some Chinese Ghosts (Boston 1887). I read these tales with increasing pleasure and immediately decided to collect more of Hearn. Soon, a respectable assemblage of his printed works was gathered, but little manuscript material was available aside from the occasional letter at auction which I added to my hoard. Influenced by accounts of this strange romantic life, I resolved to build a representative collection of Hearn’s printed works and original manuscripts most particularly.

My quest took me to Cincinnati and later to Japan, but the first rich strike came on a trip to New Orleans in 1954…. I visited many bookshops on Royal Street and lingered in an old print shop where the proprietor, learning of my interest in Lafcadio Hearn, advised me to call on a lady in the city who was the great-niece of Miss Leona Queyrouze, a Creole poet of New Orleans with whom Hearn enjoyed a platonic affair. [Barrett met her and purchased a signed copy of Some Chinese Ghosts, an inscribed-by-Hearn photo, etc.] When I returned to New York with these exciting documents and memorabilia, I quickly let it be known to various book sellers that I was definitely in the market for Hearn material. John Fleming, bless him, came to my office with a list of original Hearn manuscripts that had languished in Dr. Rosenbach’s vault for years. [Dr. ASW Rosenbach of Phila., whose house is now a modest but well-known museum in Phila.. It houses, eg., manuscripts for such outstanding literary works as James Joyce’s Ulysses, Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.] These were principally manuscripts of Hearn’s Japanese books…. Needless to say, they were a major acquisition.

Some years passed before other important material was forthcoming. [Through the James F. Drake bookshop in NYC, Barrett purchased a large collection from Mr. Leon Godchaux (the Sugar King of Louisiana), a New Orleans native working for the Illinois Railroad who had spent many years collecting Hearn.]

The extent of the collection overwhelmed me as box after box arrived. More space would clearly be required to house it. [He rented an entire floor of a building on 46th St. New York City to keep the new books and materials.] … By serendipity and a series of fortunate coincidences, it had been possible to acquire a great collection of printed works and original manuscripts left by an extraordinary literary and artistic genius, Lafcadio Hearn.”
(From “On Collecting Lafcadio Hearn” by Clifton Waller Barrett, 1983)

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4 イベント 4-4 ハーン・ワークショップ

Lecture and Study in Cincinnati and New Orleans, July and August 2001

Alan Rosen

This summer I was honored to be asked to speak on Lafcadio Hearn at the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County in Cincinnati, Ohio, the city where roughly 130 years ago this lonely and very hungry, half-Greek half-Irish boy discovered his talent as a writer and consequently changed Japan.
For me, visiting Cincinnati was especially interesting since, although I had grown up in the United States, I had never been there before.
It was the first of many “firsts” for me on this brief (one-week) but very full lecture and study trip together with about 30 enthusiastic members of the Lafcadio Hearn Society of Japan.
Though I have known the Society’s president, Professor Zenimoto, and the Kumamoto Hearn Society members for years, I was fortunate to be able to make the new acquaintance of many Hearn lovers from various parts of Japan — from Shimane and Tokyo, of course, but also from Toyama and Yamaguchi.

The speech I presented was one hour long on the topic of my recent research, Hearn and Dreams.
The weather that day was quite hot and humid, but the Library’s lecture room was very cool and comfortable. This was good and bad, I realized, as the combination of jet-lag for the Japanese listeners (it was 4 a.m. Japan time), the topic (dreams), and the extraeffort required to comprehend an academic talk in English created a nearly irresistible temptation for the Japanese audience to fall asleep. Which many of them did. Still, it was a rare pleasure for me to be able to speak about Hearn in my mother tongue and in the city of Cincinnati, about which I had read so much through Hearn’s writings.
My only concern was that I try to speak slowly enough for the Japanese members to keep up, but not too slowly so as to bore the native-speaker listeners.

There were many surprises. The first such surprise was the luxuriousness of the hotel room I was given at the Garfield Suites: apent house suite, two floors, two very spacious bedrooms, three bathrooms, a big kitchen with everything you could want including a dishwasher, and two balconies from which to enjoy views of the city.
This hotel room was largerthan my house in Kumamoto. Everyone who saw it said, “Mottainai”. I owe thanks to Dr. Tanaka and his family and to Sylvia Metzinger, the Rare Books librarian, for arranging this and many other things so perfectly.
In Cincinnati we had a custom bus-tour of the city, focussing on places related to Hearn’s life and writings.
Many of the buildings and houses are,of course, no longer standing, so it was interesting to watch many members of our tour group –including me– taking numerous photographs of empty spaces and parking lots and buildings that no longer have anything to do with Hearn except that they may be standing in a spot where we think Hearn used to do something.
Still, it was exciting to be in the same places Hearn had been.

The group’s next visit was to New Orleans. It was my first time there, too. I was dreading the heat, for it is supposedly one of the hottest cities in the US. But compared with summer in Kumamoto, it was not so uncomfortable at all. There was usually a good breeze, a tolerable level of humidity, and once you were in the shade, it was quite pleasant.
I enjoyed nearly everything about the city, and I felt I knew why Hearn had decided to live there so long.
It had polite and friendly people, excellent food (cajun and creole), charming architecture (French Quarter), live music (cajun and dixieland), and a special Southern atmosphere (full moon over the Mississippi River, a steamboat gliding down).

Our visits to the Tulane University Library, with special permission to access their collection of rare Hearn materials, were especially fruitful.
There was an abundance of manuscripts and other material that is very hard, if not impossible, to find in Japan. The staff seemed prepared for our arrival, as they were extremely helpful, kind, and tolerant of our sometimes noisy group of 30 excited visiting researchers. I did not know when I could get another chance to visit Tulane, so I thought it best tospend the entire day looking through the materials and copying, copying, copying.
My suitcase got very heavy, but I am content that I can now spend time leisurely reading over the thick stack of Hearn papers I brought back to Japan.

It was also enjoyable to be part of a Japanese tour group, not in Japan, where I have joined such tours, but in my own country.
This was another first-time experience, and I learned a lot from watching the two cultures interacting.
I was reminded that knowing the language of a countryis only the first step in intercultural communication, and that all of us who participate in the fascinating activity of crossing cultures need to continue our efforts to understand and to be understood. Wherever we went,Hearn was with us in spirit, as we all tried to be cross-cultural bridges for understanding.